Morgan: Paul Giamatti plays mind games in sci-fi thriller clip

Paul Giamatti is up for a round of cat-and-mouse in the upcoming sci-fi thriller Morgan, but he may be surprised to see who’s really the predator and who’s the prey.

In an exclusive clip from director Luke Scott‘s feature debut, Giamatti is Dr. Shapiro, an expert profiler enlisted to assess the mental state of a mysterious subject named Morgan (played by The Witch star Anya Taylor-Joy). Although she appears to be an ordinary young woman, Morgan is actually a bioengineered being with enhanced abilities and an unpredictable psyche.

It’s up to Shapiro to determine how dangerous she is, so he pokes and prods and provokes.

“He tries different tactics on her,” Giamatti tells EW. “He’s trying to get a rise out of her and get different sorts of reactions out of her, all to assess her. But she’s of course something he’s not used to dealing with. He thinks he’s walking into a cut-and-dry situation, but it’s not particularly.”

Morgan isn’t fully prepared for the encounter either. “She’s sort of incredibly advanced and incredibly immature at the same time,” Giamatti says.

The result is a slow-burning psychological showdown, which Giamatti describes as “an interesting sort of set piece in the middle of this movie.”

See an excerpt from the scene in the video above. Morgan hits theaters Sept. 2.